1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to printers for printing on a print medium by ejecting ink droplets on the print medium, and maintenance devices for such printers.
2. Discussion of the Background
One type of printer is configured as an apparatus that includes a print head with nozzles for ejecting ink droplets, and which prints by reciprocating the print head along a guide rail in left-and-right directions on a print medium and ejecting ink droplets through the nozzles to the print medium. Such a printer can be provided near an end of the guide rail with a maintenance device for performing maintenance on the nozzles. The maintenance device is placed at a position where the print head stands by during no printing operation of the printer (hereinafter, called a “standby position”) and is provided with an ink receiving chamber that opens at its upper surface facing the nozzles.
Since ink remains at an end of the nozzle for a long period of time when the print head is in the standby position, the ink may solidify so that the nozzle end becomes clogged. In order to prevent such clogging, a residual ink is ejected from the nozzle to the ink receiving chamber at certain intervals of time. During this procedure, the ejected residual ink is received by the ink receiving chamber and is sent to a waste liquid tank, where the ink is collected in the waste liquid tank. When a certain amount of residual ink is collected, the waste liquid tank is detached from the printer and the residual ink is discarded and thus wasted. Such a printer configuration as mentioned above is shown in JP-A-2002-79692, for example.
However, problems associated with such a waste liquid tank configuration have been identified.